Wednesday, September 16, 2009

In the past weeks the Pirate Bay has been ripped, copied and rebuilt by avid file-sharers, guaranteeing that the site’s legacy will be preserved no matter what. The people behind the Kiosk of Piracy take this trend to a whole new level as they have created an offline copy of the site which is open to the public.

When The Pirate Bay team announced they were selling the site, many BitTorrent fans feared that one of the largest collection of torrents would vanish forever. To prevent this from happening several people started collecting TPB torrents which they distributed to the public, while others used them to rebuild the site elsewhere on the Internet.

However, the Pirate Bay ’spirit’ doesn’t end at the borders of the Internet. To prove this, the people behind the Kiosk of Piracy installed a copy of the site on a local WiFi network that is open to the public but not actually connected to the Internet.

“The Kiosk is not connected to the Internet in any way, but the interested public is invited to use the service in a WiFi-radius around it,” the people behind the project write on their weblog.The Kiosk of Piracy located in Weimar, Germany

Even in a worst case scenario where anti-piracy outfits manage to shut down the Internet because it assists in copyright infringement, people will still be able to trade files. As the Kiosk of Piracy people explain:

“With our newest project, we are joining the work of the dear people and groups which managed to duplicate the contents of The Pirate Bay on other places in the Net. We want to show in a very physical way that the Internet is neither a machine nor controllable in any way – it is just a system of agreements which work in any circumstances. We don’t need the Internet – the magic can happen anywhere.”

Download Instructions

The downside is that this old fashioned file-sharing network will cause some logistical problems, unless you live in Weimar, Germany. But then again, everyone can setup a similar system in his or her backyard by using some old hardware.

For those interested in visiting the Kiosk of Piracy, a map of the exact location is available below. Detailed download instructions are available on the spot.